Page 83 - English Vocabulary in Use (Pre & Intermediate)

3 8 Weather

Weather conditions

Look at this list of common weather words. Notice that it is very common to form
adjectives by adding ‘-y’.
Noun Adjective Noun Adjective
sun sunny wind windy
cloud cloudy ice ic(e)y
fog foggy shower showery
heat hot humidity humid
Note: When it rains for a short period of time, we call it a shower, e.g. We had several

showers yesterday afternoon.
When it is raining a lot we often say it’s pouring or it’s pouring with rain. This phrase is
much more common than ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’, which many students seem to learn.

Temperature

<4
Vv
boiling hot warm not very warm cold freezing
(= very hot) (also chilly) (= very cold)

People round the world have different ideas about temperature:
5°C (five degrees centigrade) is freezing for many Brazilians.
—10°C (minus ten degrees or ten degrees below zero) is very cold but quite normal in the
mountains in Switzerland during the winter when it usually snows a lot.
30-35°C is boiling for England and very unusual, but it is very common in parts of Spain
during the summer.

Wind
The first word here is very gentle; the last is more than 100 km per hour and can be very
dangerous.
a breeze a wind a strong wind a gale a hurricane
It was a hot day but there was a lovely breeze.
The wind blew my hat off.
The hurricane in Florida destroyed trees and buildings.

Thunderstorms
A spell (= period) of very hot weather often ends with a thunderstorm. First it becomes very
humid (= hot and wet), then you get thunder and lightning, and finally, very heavy rain (= it
pours with rain). Afterwards, it is usually cooler and it feels fresher.

80 English Vocabulary in Use (pre-intermediate & intermediate)